Is there anything that can be done with regard to what seems like no spawn at all when someone in a hunting ground is endlessly dancing with 4 creatures? I can sit in one spot for 30 minutes and not see a single spawn, move around and still not see one.

Tier 3 snow goblins. 1 person w/ 4 goblins and never killin' em seems to lock spawn completely. Nothing.

>>IMO every hunting area should be set to at least spawn 4 per hunter.

The plus side of this is that it allows people to maximize the amount of EXP they can get out of the creatures.

The downside is that it pretty much sets the bar so that a player shouldn't hunt there until they can handle three or four of the creatures on them, or at least kill them really fast.

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"We're not "out to get you," we're here to enhance your playing experience with extreme prejudice.," DR-ARMIFER

Anyone that likes to have MO locked, probably needs to train/dance with 4 critters. Length of time to lock of course, dependent upon skill. I always feel 'lucky' if I ever get 4 things at melee with me these days...

...And if I do, then always conscience/frequently check via 'hunt' for other adventurers in the vicinity.

>Just as a reminder to all those who hunt in limited spawn areas - 3/34 is the same as 34/34. Locking is not necessary to maintain optimum learning rates.

But it really helps when you want an exp pool to drain when you go off and do other things.

The difference in advancement rates between skills you can lock and skills you can't is big because you can train other skills you can lock, then go back to the originally locked skill before it drains out and fill it up again before offline drain.

If you can only get a skill to 3/34 you are pretty screwed because not only are you stuck training it for longer periods (and worse if it is a skill that is hard to train at the same time as others), but you can't stockpile for downtime.

Lose-Lose all the way around.

-pete

>But it really helps when you want an exp pool to drain when you go off and do other things.

>The difference in advancement rates between skills you can lock and skills you can't is big because you can train other skills you can lock, then go back to the originally locked skill before it drains out and fill it up again before offline drain.

>If you can only get a skill to 3/34 you are pretty screwed because not only are you stuck training it for longer periods (and worse if it is a skill that is hard to train at the same time as others), but you can't stockpile for downtime.

>Lose-Lose all the way around.

I agree. My answer was based on the approach that MO is generally a skill that learns passively. I haven't seen too many people put much work into training MO as their primary objective - most of the time, we're just learning as we go.

There is an element of common courtesy though. If you are looking to train MO, you probably shouldn't pick an area that spawns at a rate of less than 4 per hunter or you could be really inconsiderate to your fellow hunters. In areas like this, I've always been an advocate of occasionally going into that person's room and clearing it out for them.

Maybe they should move up if it takes 30 minutes with 4 on them to lock? That's pretty inefficient training, I'd think, because their other combats have to be around the MO or higher so they're learning even less in all the other skills. I'm just glad I'm a MM and can be in another province almost immediately finding a similarly skilled critter when the need arises. (I do feel bad for the other guilds who can travel as easily though).

>>There is an element of common courtesy though. If you are looking to train MO, you probably shouldn't pick an area that spawns at a rate of less than 4 per hunter or you could be really inconsiderate to your fellow hunters. In areas like this, I've always been an advocate of occasionally going into that person's room and clearing it out for them.

Some people play characters that are very inconsiderate of fellow hunters. So yes, settling it IG would probably be the way to go.

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Individuals, families, countries, continents are destroyed at the heavy hand of Vinjince.

-GM Abasha

>IMO every hunting area should be set to at least spawn 4 per hunter.

This.

> The downside is that it pretty much sets the bar so that a player shouldn't hunt there until they can handle three or four of the creatures on them

Baby Everild forbid a critter kill an unprepared adventurer!

>Just as a reminder to all those who hunt in limited spawn areas - 3/34 is the same as 34/34.

Stop posting this like it's true. If you ever want to log out or do something else, 3 and 34 are not even remotely the same.


~Hunter Hanryu
http://drplat.com/CombatEquipmentCompendium.xls
http://tinyurl.com/HanryuTanning

>If you ever want to log out or do something else, 3 and 34 are not even remotely the same.


-Reverend Gidien

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"Under the sword lifted high, there is hell making you tremble. But go ahead, and you have the land of bliss."

~Miyamoto Musashi

>>Baby Everild forbid a critter kill an unprepared adventurer!

>> That's not what unprepared means.


This isn't about being unprepared. This is about people deliberately underhunting (if they are dancing with 4 goblins, they are underhunting, plain and simple). If we adjust spawn rates to account for this, we make the areas less huntable or even completely unhuntable for the people who SHOULD be there. Our current system is problematical, to be sure, but fixing it by just turning up the spawn rates just makes more problems than it solves, ranging from making areas unusable by the target levels to screwing up the economy even more than it already is by making fertile killing fields for looters, with dozens of other problems great and small between.


- GM Dartenian

Though my soul may set in darkness it will rise in perfect light. I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night! - Sarah Williams

> If you are backtraining and able to dance with 4, you are where you should be.


Not really. If you can dance with 4 without serious risk, your defenses aren't being challenged enough to require staying -- considering you (presumably) aren't dying with a substantial penalty to all active defenses in addition to the penalties being imposed by your armor. You can move up the ladder. Really you can.


Note: I am not saying you don't have to step down a few notches in the hunting ladder from time to time when backtraining, although this is far more rare with armor than other skills, since at the current time almost all armor hindrance goes away between 70-150 ranks depending on the armor.

What I am saying is that if you can dance with 4 in virtual safety, you are underhunting too far as far as defenses are concerned, and tying up resources that should be going to players who are at that level range and need them more than you do.


- GM Dartenian

Though my soul may set in darkness it will rise in perfect light. I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night! - Sarah Williams

> Weapons obviously are a different story. But if you're training new weapons you aren't dancing with four so that's not really an issue here.


Bingo!

I do realize that there is a certain comfort in dancing in areas where you can handle the engagement cap safely to train defenses. However, this does create serious problems for people who are hunting at level, and raising the gen rate just isn't going to solve the problem since it will make the area unhuntable for the same people who are training "at level".

As I mentioned in an earlier post, we are looking at various solutions. Raising the gen rate (past 2.5 or 3 per player, anyway) is not one of them.


- GM Dartenian

Though my soul may set in darkness it will rise in perfect light. I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night! - Sarah Williams

<<Long live underhunting?

You missed what Dart said. If you are underhunting (backtraining) weapons, then there is no issue because you are killing things.

If you are hogging spawn for defense training, then that is an issue.

For me, just use some darn common sense and kill some things every now and then no matter how you are training. That is courteous to everyone around you and causes no issues.

Madigan

The solution IMO is easy (implementation is probably harder but that's your guys' problem)

Hunting areas should teach better at their level, but have harder experience caps. If you don't want someone milking experience, then stop them from doing it by having hard caps.

You can't really say someone is underhunting when they are locking 2 armors, 3 weapons, and all defenses and being almost completely immune to attacks. That's at level. At level is defined by how experience is rewarded from how the GM's set it up and that isn't going to change ever. If you don't want it that way then change it, otherwise everyone will keep dancing in an almost immune state to gain experience.

That's how I see it anyways.


Forged Weapons:
http://www.elanthipedia.com/wiki/User:Codiax#Codiax-Forged-Weapons

> Hunting areas should teach better at their level, but have harder experience caps.


Agreed. The only real problem there is the extensive hunting gaps in DR, especially on the provincial level. On the bright side, I have been spending a lot of time discussing this very thing with GM Ulerith, our magnificent and hard-working Critter Guru, and we are working towards identifying (she's amazing when it comes to data tracking) and plugging a lot of the gaps.

I am pushing hard on getting the Combat 3.0 rewrite finished. It should help people hunt much more successfully and with much greater reward at their skill level, as well as provide ways to backtrain without having to drop down too many rungs on the ladder. With any luck, the first major round of testing should begin in the very near future, although I want to be clear that the first round of testing will be purely "calibration" testing -- meaning testing to help me determine how to tweak the numbers so that x ranks vs x ranks is ideal.

Stay tuned for some fun trivia in the next couple of weeks regarding just how people are hunting in terms of their skill vs the skill of their opponents. I think it will open a lot of eyes to just how skewed things are now.


- GM Dartenian

Though my soul may set in darkness it will rise in perfect light. I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night! - Sarah Williams

I have the hardest time with any hunting ground that teaches defenses with only 2 critters on me. This usually means as soon as a third one gets on me I start taking hits and die in short order.

-Reverend Gidien

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"Under the sword lifted high, there is hell making you tremble. But go ahead, and you have the land of bliss."

~Miyamoto Musashi

Your words are very inspiring Dart :)

For a while it was as if the Combat 3.0 system had died when you stopped posting for so long!

__
~Leilond
http://www.elanthipedia.com/wiki/Leilond
http://soundsoftime.bravehost.com

>>I have the hardest time with any hunting ground that teaches defenses with only 2 critters on me. This usually means as soon as a third one gets on me I start taking hits and die in short order.

Heh. When I start feeling safe with 3 critters at melee on me, I take it that means it's time to move up a tier.

backtraining parry can easily get me killed if i don't dance with 4 and cap them out completely before moving to the next critter up. Because i have to turn evasion far enough down in my stances in order to learn it.

Although i mostly play in plat and in TF, so "hogging" critter-spawn isn't an issue. nobody is usually in the area in either instance.

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You've seen life through distorted eyes;You know you had to learn;The execution of your mind;You really had to turn;,the book is read,The end begins to show,The truth is out, the lies are old, But you don't want to know - Black Sabbath